130 
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
influence our health through our comfort and our well-being, 
namely, laws which enable us to yoke the lightning to our wishes 
and so to transmit our messages in a moment to the uttermost 
parts of the world, or, again, laws which enable us so to harness the 
force of magnetism as to guide the mariner to his haven over the 
trackless ocean. Try to realise the broad character of the laws 
under which we obtain pure air, pure water, pure food, and all 
that charms the eye, the ear, and the other organs of sense ; and 
the laws that point to the character of the best clothing for the 
individual, the best dwelling for the family, and the best relation¬ 
ship of one dwelling to another in a community. These are some 
of the perfect, all-powerful, irreversible laws of nature. 
The manner in which and the extent to which health more or 
less perfect is governed by laws such as those just sketched is the 
subject of the present Address. No one is so healthy but might 
be more healthy, and no one is so unhealthy but might be less 
unhealthy, by a proper apprehension and application of the all- 
sufficient laws of nature. 
In the consideration of this subject, no doubt personal health 
must occupy the first place; for the health of the aggregate in a 
house, a town, or a country, must chiefly depend on the personal 
health of each inhabitant. But a healthy individual, or a healthy 
family, or a healthy community, may be the cause, perhaps the 
innocent cause, of ill-health in another individual, or another family, 
or another community; as, for example, when one person un¬ 
wittingly gives fever to another, or when one or more persons 
draw pure water from a stream, but omit precautions that provide 
for the stream passing on pure to their neighbours. Therefore 
any comprehensive view of the laws of nature in relation to health 
must include the laws specially affecting the health of small and 
large communities, as well as the laws affecting the health of the 
individuals composing those communities. We must have healthy 
homes and healthy towns, as well as healthy individual inhabitants, 
for otherwise those inhabitants will soon cease to be healthy. 
Ill-health will, in this Address, only be considered incidentally; 
that is to say, will only be alluded to as resulting from our ignorance 
of, or our nonconformity with, the laws regulating health. Ill- 
health once produced must be treated under a special set of laws 
applied by experts who have special knowledge respecting those 
laws, namely, by medical practitioners—a noble band of men, 
whose practice everywhere and always is to endeavour with the 
utmost practicable speed to reinstate in health those from whom 
that inestimable blessing has been temporarily withdrawn. 
